


Five Reasons Clinton Francis Barton is Head over Heels for Agent Phillip J Coulson and One Reason the Sentiment is Returned

by skidmo



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-15 22:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/854751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skidmo/pseuds/skidmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just what it says on the tin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Marksmanship

When Clint had first met Phil, he wasn’t sure what to think. The guy was level 7 at a super-secret spy agency, and he looked like Clint’s high school principal. There had to be more to him than met the eye.

So Clint watched him.

He made himself as unobtrusive as possible and just watched.

It didn’t take long for him to see that Phil was quietly badass. He was competent and capable, and he was so…mundane about it. It impressed Clint in a way that very few things did.

But the first time Clint admitted to himself that Phil was sexy was the first time he saw him on the range.

He was due for a firearms recertification, which was why he was on the general range rather than the area he usually used for his bow practice, and Phil was there walking a couple of juniors through their first training.

He shot like he did everything else—calm, competent, controlled—and Clint couldn’t take his eyes off the man. 

When he’d emptied his clip, he looked over at Clint and smiled faintly, a little more genuine than his usual smiles, his face slightly flushed, and Clint was a goner.

 

It was several months later that Clint and Phil had their first assignment together. Clint had worked his way through the other handlers almost systematically and no one else would take him on. When Phil agreed to go on a mission with him, Clint found himself more excited than he had cause to be. He wanted to see Agent Coulson in the field, to watch that competence in action.

He wasn’t disappointed.

The op went south, and they were working off plan. Clint ended up out of his hidey hole and in the action, and he made a rookie mistake and found himself on his knees with a Beretta to his head and some asshole making threats he couldn’t possibly follow through without his boss’s approval.

Except this guy was too on edge, to antsy. He had an itchy trigger finger, and for a moment Clint actually thought this might be it for him.

And then he heard a gunshot and the guy dropped to the floor. Clint was on his feet in half a second, and the fight started up all over again.

Eventually they completed the mission and got everyone out that needed out. Clint got stuck in medical and sat through his debriefing and half-assed his mission report, and the whole time he couldn’t get the picture of Phil’s face as he stood there, holding his smoking sidearm, out of his mind.


	2. Lola

It wasn’t so much the car itself, although Clint would be the first to say that Phil looked damn sexy in a Sean Connery James Bond sort of way behind the wheel. Lola suited him. Phil was _that kind_ of agent. That kind of spy.

That kind of sexy.

But it wasn’t that.

It was that Phil named his car, and what he named it was Lola.

When people asked Phil, “Why Lola?” Phil always smiled in his very Phil way and said, “Because whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.”

 

One night in Tel Aviv, when Clint had been in his rooftop perch for several hours, staring down the barrel of several more, he asked over the comm, “Why Lola?”

For a moment, he thought Phil wouldn’t answer. That happened sometimes when Phil thought he shouldn’t be breaking comm silence—not often, but sometimes—and Phil would just ignore him, and Clint would either ramble on to himself or shut up.

But after several minutes’ silence, Phil said, “I had this aunt, growing up. She was that very auntie type of aunt, you know? Flowery perfume and awkward kisses and weird, useless birthday presents.”

He paused, and Clint was on the verge of prompting him to continue.

“When I was twelve, she rolled up to the house in a cherry red, ’62 Corvette saying she was off to see the country. She had on these big, Audrey Hepburn sunglasses, and a bright orange scarf around her hair, and she looked at me and said, ‘Phillip, sometimes you just gotta tell the world not to wait up for you. You’ve got an adventure coming.’

“We found out later she’d just been diagnosed with cancer, and she wanted to have one last hurrah before the end.”

They were both quiet after that, and when the op wrapped up and they were back in New York, Clint brought two bottles of beer into Phil’s office where he was finishing up the paperwork. He popped the caps off and handed one to Phil before moving to the couch and raising his bottle. “Here’s to Lola.”

“To Lola,” Phil said, and they both took a long, slow sip.


	3. The Sex

It was phenomenal, okay?

Phil was a genius in bed. He was a genius most places, Clint was sure, but he was _really_ a genius in bed. Anyone who thought he was just a desk jockey had obviously never started in the kitchen and ended up half in and half out of the bedroom, head to knee with Agent Coulson, gasping for breath and wondering how long before they could do that again.

And Clint was pretty okay with the fact that no one else at SHIELD had that kind of proof of Phil’s genius.


	4. The Proposal

It was late. They’d had a hell of a mission, and some spectacular sex, and Clint lay in bed with his head on Phil’s thigh, a satisfied smile on his face. 

“Marry me,” he joked, lazy and comfortable, Phil’s fingers sliding through his hair, rubbing against his scalp.

“Okay,” Phil said, not even missing a beat, and it wasn’t until then that Clint realized he hadn’t been joking at all.

 

It took them two weeks to set a date, and since neither of them wanted a big to do, all they did was make an appointment with a justice of the peace and invite Natasha and Steve to act as witnesses.

When the day came, they were in Tuscany, cleaning up after a Hydra installation, and in the evening, they took a room in a small town. Clint left Phil at the pensione to wander the streets for a few hours, on the pretense of gathering supplies for dinner, and when he came back, he had bread and cheese and oil and fresh pasta and herbs.

Phil smiled when he came into the room. “Find anything good?”

“Yeah,” Clint said, setting the supplies aside and reaching into his pocket. “Yeah, I did.”

He placed two plain, silver rings in Phil’s palm, and Phil arched an eyebrow at them. “What’s this?”

“We said today,” Clint answered simply, and Phil’s smile deepened a little. He held onto one of the rings and gave the other to Clint.

“How do you want to do this?”

Clint thought for a moment and then reached for Phil’s hand, sliding the ring onto his finger. “I promise to love you even when you call me on my stupid shit and make me do paperwork and get so wrapped up in bureaucracy that you forget to eat.”

Phil’s expression grew both fond and serious, and he reached for Clint’s hand, just holding it a long moment before slipping the ring onto his finger, saying softly, “I promise to love you even when you put yourself in danger for no reason and refuse to finish your mission reports and steal my fruit pies.”

Clint smiled and clasped Phil’s hands so their rings clinked together softly. “For the rest of my life,” he whispered.

“For the rest of my life,” Phil echoed.


	5. The Donuts

Clint was pretty sure it was just the donut-ness of them that Phil liked. He was equally happy with powdered donettes from the corner store as he was that magical day Clint got him into the Doughnut Plant and watched him chow down on a cashew and orange blossom doughseed.

Phil smiled a lot. Most of his smiles were in varying degrees of Agent Mode. He had to do it for the job, to appear mild-mannered and unassuming.

But there was something particularly special about the way Phil smiled when Clint brought him a donut. It had become a Thing. Whenever Clint went on an op by himself, he would bring Phil back a donut from whatever local donut shop was popular wherever he had been. He was getting to be an expert at packing them so they’d still be fresh when he got them back to Phil.

 

When they finally did get back and have time to get legally hitched, Steve and Tony threw them a party. Clint was impressed. It was festive and understated at the same time, and he knew who to thank for each.

What he didn’t know was who to thank for the way Phil’s face lit up when he looked across the room and saw what looked like a _croque en bouche_ but closer examination revealed to be made entirely of donut holes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A [croque en bouche](http://www.sweet-art.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/1208_croque-en-bouche1.jpg) is a traditional French wedding cake. It's usually made with cream puffs rather than donut holes.


	6. And One Reason the Sentiment is Returned

Phil was awake almost before the sun came up. It happened quite a lot on missions like this. His body hadn’t quite gotten itself out of emergency mode, and he didn’t want to be caught off guard. 

As the sunlight seeped in through the window, he looked down at the sleeping form next to him, relaxed and open and trusting.

That never ceased to amaze him.

Clinton Francis Barton: runaway, carnie, assassin, Avenger. He had all the reasons in the world never to trust anyone again, and yet he let himself be like this with Phil, vulnerable and perfect. He smiled at the play of sunlight over the tips of Clint’s morning ruffled hair even as he chastised himself for being so sentimental.

Even so, his hand moved to where Clint’s rested on his chest, fingertip lightly tracing the silver band on the third finger, smile deepening as Clint shifted and blinked open his eyes.

“M’rnin’,” Clint muttered, settling closer against Phil, head nuzzling Phil’s shoulder.

“Good morning,” Phil answered quietly, his fingers sliding slowly up Clint’s arm.

It was a good morning, and it had been a good week, and it was going to be a good rest of their lives.


End file.
